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[Drak]

Hi TIG,

One of my friend and I, actually working on a small video game project (like a lot of people here.....yes..), the goal for us is to build a small and nice project off course but most of all, increase our skills. I'm the graphic designer on this project and for the game we would like to build a day/night system so I want to work on 4 different scenes like this :



Really like the atmosphere...

Here is my work in progress for the main screen of the game :



First, I want to build the "night" scene but the fact is....I have some trouble to imagine how the light and shadow works on this scene. That's why I'm here! I hope that I can have some great advices to help building a nice and coherent scene.

Thanks guys!

ps : My english not perfect, hope everything it's clear...

[charliecarlo]

It really depends on if there are light-sources within the room.
If the only light source is the night sky, then there'd be dim light cast on the ground through the doorways.
If there are lights inside (which there appears to be, as you've cast shadows from the wooden thing in the center), depending on the brightness, they would make the outside sky appear darker.

Really the first step is deciding where and what your light-sources are.
From there you can derive brightness, direction, color and location.

[Drak]

First thank you!! Really appreciate it!

I'm actually working again on my scene, the last one was too crappy I guess....Lack of depth! I want to build a complete and clean one yes?

So here I am :



For the light and shadow what could be the most interesting in terms of atmosphere? Using the moon as the only source of light is not really natural no? I would like to add some little torches each side of the bed. Maybe it's a really stupid question but can we build the light and shadow using a kind of perspective grid?

[charliecarlo]

Perspective is a good way to figure it out, I suppose.
I usually just eye-ball it so I don't have much experience with that, I'm afraid.
I usually try to imagine that the light source is a balloon or a bubble.
And then imagine it inflating to see what it would touch.
It sounds silly when I type it out like that.
Hm.

The moon is the main source of light at night, and has a blue or white color to it.
It's very ambient and dull though, compared to artificial light.

If you put torches in, their warm-colored light would probably over-power the moon's light.
Except in areas like the very edge of the back of those pillars,
Where there'd be some moonlight.

EDIT: Also torch light doesn't travel very far, so keep that in mind as well.

[Drak]

I try to work carefully on it, I post my WIP here and hope I can have more advices. What about the methodology? Do you some interesting tuts around light and shadow?

[CaLooch]

imo, I say try to push the differences between lighted and dark areas as much as possible.  Bring the darker area much further down and the lighted areas much brighter.  If the light source is moon light then I suggest giving the light a blue-ish white tint.

[Cobralad]

achromatic pure gray is not a color you can ever use with other colors
just pick any part of fourth picture to see that there is no pure grey in there

[Jad]

that's not entirely true. I was drawing some blue on top of yellow and realized in the midst of drawing that I was actually using achromatic grey.

But yes, for this kind of silhouette art, large areas of achromatic grey isn't very attractive

[Muffinhat]

I try to work carefully on it, I post my WIP here and hope I can have more advices. What about the methodology? Do you some interesting tuts around light and shadow?

I don't have an insane amount of experience in this kind art, but I notice in the reference images you use, there are subtle gradients in pretty much every surface, as well as a sort of bloom effect from the light source. Adding this kind of detail may break up some of the monotony in the colors. That's just my two cents.

[diegzumillo]

Night scene lighting is by far the hardest one. Since you seem like a beginner, I suggest starting from day time, look at some photographs of interiors with neat natural lighting and go from there. The reason night light is so tricky has to do with how we perceive low light conditions, the whole thing is less intuitive.